Political scientist and media critic

January 19, 2011

Sarah Palin's poll numbers get even worse

Sarah Palin's image problems have gotten even worse. A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted January 14-16 (immediately after the controversy over her ham-handed response to the shootings in Arizona) finds that perceptions of Palin have declined significantly since October:

A new national poll indicates that 56 percent of all Americans have an unfavorable view of Sarah Palin, an all-time high for the former Alaska governor. That 56 percent unfavorable figure is up seven points from just before the midterm elections, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Wednesday morning.

Thirty-eight percent of people questioned in the poll say they have a favorable view of the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, down two points from October.

...According to the survey, Palin's unfavorable rating is up 10 points among women, compared to just three points among men, and among independent voters, her unfavorable rating has grown a whopping 14 points.

A new USA Today/Gallup poll conducted during the same three-day period recorded nearly identical results (38% favorable, 53% unfavorable), though the estimated decline since the previous Gallup poll (November) was less dramatic.

If Palin is indeed considering running for president, it's worth noting just how unsuccessful she's been at building the necessary public profile. Sincelast year, I have been tracking her poll numbers relative to the most obvious comparison -- Hillary Clinton, another polarizing female politician. Clinton could never fully shed the high unfavorable ratings she acquired during her husband's presidency, but she worked hard to improve her image and maintained higher favorable ratings during the period before the Democratic primary campaign began in 2007. By contrast, Palin's ratings have been consistently worse during the comparable 2008-2011 period, and the gap between her and Hillary has widened dramatically in recent months (data from Gallup):

In this sense, Sarah Palin is morelike Dan Quayle, a former vice president who never recovered from his image problems, than Hillary Clinton, who came within a few primary votes of being the Democratic nominee in a favorable electoral environment. Back in September, I argued that the the Intrade contract for a Palin run, which was then trading at 69%, was too high. It's now at 60%, but that still looks overpriced to me.

Update 1/20 6:59 AM: Andrew Sullivan points out that Palin's numbers among Republican are still competitive with other well-known presidential contenders:

Her unfavorables are indeed impressive. They just reached a new high in CNN's poll of 56 percent. But what I'd note as well is that her favorables remain at 38 percent, which is obviously concentrated in the GOP base. The poll of polls puts it at 35 percent - again roughly the core GOP vote. Huckabee is more popular as a person among Republicans, according to Gallup, but when you combine star power and favorability in the GOP, Palin is very much in the running:

Update 1/20 9:42 PM: Similarly, the new CBS/New York Times poll conducted January 15-19 puts Palin's ratings at 19% favorable/57% unfavorable, which is down from 22% favorable/48% unfavorable in early October.

Comments

I agree with Brendan's analysis as far as it goes. But, I'm not betting my retirement savings on Intrade, because anyone can announce a run for President.

In the past, some became Presidential candidates because they were unreasonably optimistic about their chance of winning. When surrounded by adoring supporters, it's easy to overestimate one's popularity.

Some were so eager to be President that they ran knowing their chances were remote, e.g. Bob Dole. Some ran knowing they had no chance, because being a candidate gave them a public forum, e.g. Alan Keyes. Some, like Harold Stassen, just seemed to enjoy running for President.

In short, Palin has the sole control of the decision. Statistics alone are not sufficient to predict whether she will become an announced candidate. One also needs to guess as to her state of mind.

Palin's numbers are what they are, but Brendan's parenthetical is priceless. Brendan notes that the poll was conducted "immediately after the controversy over her ham-handed response to the shootings in Arizona." You know what else occurred just before the poll was conducted? Sarah Palin was vilified as having been responsible for the massacre. If I were looking for something that might have moved her numbers, I'd think that might be more relevant than her "ham-handed response." Brendan tries hard to be even-handed, but evidence of his political perspective is inescapable.

Those were the findings the parenthetical was intended to reflect. It could be fallout from the effort to blame her (which I condemned repeatedly). In any case, it's impossible to tell what exactly caused the change -- a lot has happened since the last CNN poll in October.

Incidentally, it was no coincidence that the dishonest attacks on Palin were so well coordinated. A group of liberal pundits communicate via the secretive "Cabalist" and make collective decisions about what to write. Amusingly, wikipedia writes:

[Cabalist], which had 173 members by late July, was made up mostly of former Journolist members. Its existence managed to stay secret for several weeks, until The Atlantic magazine correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg revealed its existence in a blog post on July 21. Goldberg reported that one recent discussion concerned whether or not members should ignore the articles on The Daily Caller website. "In other words, members of Journolist 2.0 were debating whether to collectively respond to a Daily Caller story alleging—inaccurately, in their minds—that members of Journolist 1.0 (the same people, of course) made collective decisions about what to write"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList

Maybe so, Brendan, but let's parse the numbers. The CBS poll question asked about political tone in general; Palin was not specifically mentioned. Accordingly, respondents' overall perceptions of her probably didn't greatly influence the results.

In the CNN poll reported on by the Daily News, on the other hand, the question was specifically about Palin. In that poll, 30% approved her response, whereas 46% disapproved. But this is at approximately the same time that her favorable/unfavorable rating was 38/56. How many of those who said they disapproved/approved of her response were actually simply registering their overall disapproval/approval of Palin? My instinct is most of them. If they like Palin, they generally approved of her response. If they don't, they didn't.

In any event, comparing the two polls and using that comparison to judge the extent to which the public was more influenced by the vilification of Palin (which you certainly did write about) or her defense against that vilification (or, as you refer to it, her "ham-handed response to the shootings") seems like a stretch.

I appreciate the effort for even-handedness especially when dealing with Palin. The second her name is brought up left-leaning folks turn off the critical thinking and turn into knee-jerk critics. She could post "the sky is blue today" on her facebook page and some lefty pundit blogger would attack her for it.

In addition to the original vilification of Palin and her response, there was another event: the vilification of her response.

The response was criticized by many liberals on a preposterous argument regarding the phrase "blood libel." Even though that phrase accurately describes blaming an innocent person for mass murder, it also has a specific meaning related to anti-semitism. Palin's critics claimed that because of the specific meaning, Palin was wrong to use the phrase in any other way. Not only does this argument make no sense, some of those critics had also used the phrase in ways unrelated to anti-semitism.

As Brendan points out, it's hard to separate the effects of the original smear and Palin's defense. It would be even harder to separate out the impact of Palin's defense from its vilification.

BTW the day Palin's defense appeared on the web, the Lehrer news hour focused on a speech Obama had made. I don't think they showed any of Palin's speech. I don't know how other news outlets handled it. The point is, many people may not have seen Palin's defense. Their opinion of it may be entirely a reflection of pundits who told their audience that it was a bad speech.

Is part of the reason Dan Quayle never recovered from his image as a bumbling doofus because he never did anything (or enough) to raise his profile during the Clinton presidency, whereas then-Sen. Clinton did while Bush was in office?

Did it also hurt Quayle that the economy did well while Clinton was in office (fundamentals)?